As India prepares to begin a general election, we go to Delhi to learn more about the world's biggest democracy through its writers. Anu Anand rummages through stalls selling Hindui pulp fiction and hears how a new generation is forging its own literary language not only from English and Hindi but from combinations of all the dialects spoken on the streets of this buzzing city.

The opening up of the economy has transformed India's fortunes over the last 20 years, but journalist Aman Sethi explains he was drawn to a very different Delhi for his recent book, A Free Man: that of the impoverished construction site workers.

Rana Dasgupta, author of another work of non-fiction, Capital, discusses with Randeep Ramesh a city of extremes, whose burgeoning middle-classes have changed the economic landscape radically in the new millennium.

Finally we meet Manil Suri, mathematician and author, whose latest novel – just out in paperback – places a gay man at the centre of a futuristic fantasy based in another of India's mega-cities, Mumbai.